An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new way to increase the robustness and energy storage capability of a particular class of "lithium-rich" cathode materials — by using a carbon dioxide-based gas mixture to create oxygen vacancies at the material's surface. Researchers said the treatment improved the energy density — the amount of energy…

Air pollutants interact with and break down plant-emitted scent molecules, which insect pollinators use to locate needed food, according to a team of researchers led by Penn State. The pollution-modified plant odors can confuse bees and, as a result, bees' foraging time increases and pollination efficiency decreases. This happens because the chemical interactions decrease both…

Forest fires in Indonesia last year released 11.3 million tonnes of carbon per day, researchers have found. This figure exceeds the daily rate of 8.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions from the whole of the European Union, the study says.The 2015 fires were the worst since 1997, when a strong El Niño also fanned widespread fires, says the study, published…

A volcano erupting on a small island in the Sub Antarctic is depositing ash over one of the world’s largest penguin colonies.Zavodovski Island is a small island in the South Sandwich archipelago and its volcano Mt Curry has been erupting since March 2016. The island is home to over one million chinstrap penguins – the…

The common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important food legume in the tropics. It is an inexpensive source of proteins and minerals for almost 400 million people, mainly from Africa and Latin America. It is generally cultivated by small farmers and subject to conditions limiting their productivity. Drought affects 60% of bean crops…

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Nepartak after it became a major typhoon in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.The second tropical cyclone of the northwestern Pacific Ocean season formed on July 3 and strengthened quickly into a tropical storm that was named Nepartak.On July 5 at 0359 UTC (11:59 p.m. EDT) infrared data from the Atmospheric…

Droughts in California are mainly controlled by wind, not by the amount of evaporated moisture in the air, new research has found. The research increases the understanding of how the water cycle is related to extreme events and could eventually help in predicting droughts and floods.The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of…

The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which…

Those orange tree patches pictured aren’t harbingers of winter. They are dying or dead trees in California, most likely the result of pine beetle forest damage.It’s hot now in much of the golden state, and as temperatures continue to rise, something else is happening: Trees are dying in unprecedented numbers.A recent U.S. Forest Service aerial detection survey revealed a…

Scientists from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a possible secret to dramatically boosting the efficiency of perovskite solar cells hidden in the nanoscale peaks and valleys of the crystalline material.Solar cells made from compounds that have the crystal structure of the mineral perovskite have captured scientists' imaginations. They're…